7 Customer Personas You Should Take Note Of This Christmas
Ho-ho! Christmas is coming, and so are the Christmas Campaigns! We’re reaching the end of the Holiday Season, but this doesn’t mean advertising is less relevant. The main issue with Christmas is that everyone buys presents, so we need to distinguish who will be likely to frequent your website. This blog will tell you all about the main customers that will be present on Christmas, and why it is essential to take note of them.
Millie D'Arcangelo
Copy Writer at The Next Ad
Dec 10, 2019
What is a Customer Persona?
In his book, Ardath Albee defines a Customer Persona as ‘an archetype; a composite picture of the real people who buy, or might buy, products like the ones you market, based on what you’ve learned in direct interviews with real buyers’.
This means that a persona isn’t just a customer, but they’re also a representation of the real people who frequent your business. Furthermore, the only way of creating these personas is to gather data about them first. Without your customer data, you can’t build this ‘archetype’.
Why should I be aware of Customer Personas?
To create a successful Christmas campaign, you, as a business owner, marketer, or advertiser, need to know who you’re going to reach. But this isn’t just ‘speculating’ but is based on actual research of these archetypes we’ve just mentioned.
The benefit of being aware of these personas is that you can have a more precise campaign with real details of customers who will potentially reach to your business.
It’s alright to be extra-specific during these times. Considering personas will reach not only the typical Christmas buyers but also those who’re likely to be so. For example, without building customer personas, you’ll never take the Millenials as a potential buyer group. They’ll just be ‘people who were born in the 21st century’ for you, but it actually means so much more than that (we’ll cover this later in this article).
With a proper customer persona analysis, your campaigns will be more specific, and so will be your audiences and ads. You’ll create special stories that will be tailored to the individual needs, challenges, and goals of each intended customer persona, or later on, your audience, simply.
The challenging bit is that the previous data analysis, but it’s worth it if you want to make the best out of Christmas Holidays.
How do Customer Personas work for Christmas?
The ideal thing to do these Holidays, as we’ve just mentioned, is to separate your audience. But how? Alright, some ideas for you to work on this Christmas is to do audience segmentation. Examples of segmentation are:
Christmas families (they spend the holidays at home with their families);
Young parents (parents looking for gifts for small children);
Last-minute Holiday Shoppers (just people buying presents for their loved ones);
Luxury shoppers (oh, yeah, those lucky shoppers who spend a grand in just a gift);
Christmas travellers (shoppers looking for Christmas flight deals).
With this segmentation in mind, you can see who might be able to fit your Christmas deals better. Or maybe everyone. It just depends on your business profile, your objective, and what you offer.
Customer Personas: all the details and types
The shifting nature of Customer Personas
Customers personas, unfortunately, aren’t static. They’re bound to change even within your holiday campaign. For example, the Christmas Family persona who planned to spend Christmas at home, decide to go somewhere else last-minute. You, as an advertiser, need to adjust or simply be prepared to and for these shifting needs.
There’s also another way of shifting behaviour. If you haven’t built these personas tailored to the Holidays, you probably haven’t taken into consideration that the ordinary Young Parents will behave differently during Christmas.
Instead of focusing on affordable nappies, practical home goods, and dummies that don’t exceed the price of 2 pounds, they’ll probably become more ‘frivolous’. This means they’ll spend more money than usual, being likely to buy more expensive products than average, and obviously… products that aren’t really needed.
Types of typical Customer Personas
In general, we divide customer personas according to their behaviour. We’ve mentioned audience segmentation, but within those audiences, we’ve got different groups of people. Let’s see who they are, so you know who to target and how to make them shop.
1. The Millenials
You’ve probably heard this term insanely often throughout your life. Yes, the first generation to grow up digital are a brilliant opportunity for digital advertising. Firstly, they shop online more than anyone else, which, if you have a webshop, will be highly useful for this Christmas. Secondly, they use their phones for everything, meaning that you’ll be more likely to reach them. And finally, they use videos to get ideas for presents (There you are: video advertising!).
In this sense, the Millenials are one of the most flexible personas. They buy all types of presents across all categories, they’ve got tons of people to worry about because the Millenials are still ‘in the middle’ (they might have parents, siblings, children, cousins, etc.). Great personas to consider, aren’t they?
2. The Cautious Customer
You might’ve heard about this if you live in Britain. With Brexit happening, buyers have become extra cautious, and I’m sure this is happening in other countries as well. When there’s a feeling of instability, instead of spending an insane amount of money in, for example, travelling, Cautious Customers will go for ‘Children & Babies’ and ‘Health’ categories, which are more essential, clearly. They simply play safe.
3. The Loyal Customer
When purchasing a present, the Loyal Customer will turn to their preferred, exclusive brand, hence the importance of building brand loyalty when advertising digitally. You need to secure these customers will come back to you during these times because, you know, they’ll spend double the amount of money they tend to during regular times. For more information about customer loyalty and how to earn it, you can check this blog out.
4. The Last-Minute Customer
Well, apart from purchasing tons of presents for all of their loved ones, the Last-Minute Shopper is probably the one who forgot Christmas was coming. Bring on your ‘last-minute-focused campaigns’ and target them with ‘last-minute deals’. They won’t be able to resist.
5. The Deal Chaser
This is quite simple. These buyers want the best deal, the best price, and the best product at the same time. They look for discounts mostly, as you can see.
These deal chasers will be alert not only on Christmas but also on Boxing Day since this sales period is an opportunity for them to get discounts on leftovers from Christmas.
They might also look for the opportunity to replace items that have been given to them on Christmas, and usually quite quickly. These are called ‘sly-shoppers’. To target them, Skimlinks suggests preparing gift cards or subscription boxes, which are perfect for shoppers who’re looking for a quick replacement for an unwanted present.
6. The Browser
Here, advertisers are inserting the ‘unamused’ emoji. The Browsers are those customers who spend their time looking for presents but never actually buy one. Also, they tend to abandon their cart really easily.
To encourage the Browsers to become actual shoppers and leave their aimless looking behind, target them with cart abandonment emails (‘You still have this product in your shopping trolley. Click this link to continue your purchase’).
It sometimes happens that they might be too stubborn, and not even this technique will work for them to purchase. In that case, send the Browsers an easy, quick-to-fill survey to complete, and offer them a deal as a reward. Come on, who can’t resist discounts?
7. The Impulsive Shopper
Oh, these ones are funny. They will browse, and browse, and browse, and suddenly, bam!
They’ve made a purchase.
And not only a purchase, but probably more than they even intended to in the first place. This is why they’re more likely to buy complementary, inexpensive products before checking out.
Attracting these customers won’t be so tough. If they’ve just bought, you can send them a thank-you email offering them complimentary offers (for example, they’ve just bought a T-shirt, so you send them an email with some trousers to match it). They’ll come running straight to you.
Conclusion: So what do you do now with all these people?
My final recommendation is to segment. Collect data, find these personas, build profiles, so that your campaigns are to the point. Check out all the typical customer personas, and consider how to engage with or approach them. Some of them are easy to reach, others are cheeky and unpredictable. But with the correct data, you’ll find ways to get to know your audience and sell the right products to the right people.
The result: more customer satisfaction, more chances of turning them into ‘repeat buyers’ (and who knows, they might even become loyal), and more revenue for you, of course. Knowing who you’re targeting is essential if you want to have successful Christmas sales.
